Two easy tips for link building to improve SEO

You have probably heard the phrase “content is king” when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy for your website. While I would never denounce this self-evident truth in the SEO world, great content means less without links.

Links to your content are signs of trust to search engines. They tell Google, Bing, and others that your content is authoritative and worthy, especially when its other sites with strong reputations that link back to your website. These types of links are appropriately called “linkbacks”.

They are evidence to search engines that sites are shouting about what you’ve published and that others should take notice.

Here are two tips for grabbing some low-hanging linkback fruit to improve your SEO and increase organic search traffic:

1. Is someone talking about you but not linking to you?

There may be a number of websites that are talking about the great work your organization does, but not providing a link back to your website. This can deny you of valuable traffic.

A simple search tip can help you identify some of these linkback opportunities: in your search engine, type your organization/company name in quotation marks such as “my nonprofit organization”. By searching with quotations, you are telling the search engine to find an exact match to that combination of keywords. It may take some digging through the search results, but you may just find some gold. If/when you do find sites that are talking about you but not linking to you, send them a quick message asking if they could put your link in there!

2> Is someone linking to your site with an incorrect URL?

One of the most common mistakes when linking to a site is the .org / .com / .net / .edu (and so on) mix up. Luckily SEOmoz has a great tool at http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ to help you find these linkback errors and fix them. In the Open Site Explorer search bar, type incorrect versions of your site’s web address to identify potential linkback errors. For example, a common error for nonprofit websites is using .com instead of .org, so give that one a try.

So remember, when it comes to SEO, yes, content is king, but there is also an almighty equation that you must not forget: Great Content – Links = No Search Engine Traffic

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